Illinois becomes 37th state to ratify Equal Rights Amendment

Thursday

Originally brought to the states for ratification in 1972, only 35 state legislatures voted for the amendment before a 1982 deadline set by Congress.

SPRINGFIELD, Illinois — After hours of debate Wednesday night, the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution passed the Illinois House.

The resolution was approved 72-45, making Illinois the 37th state to ratify the ERA, which outlaws discrimination based on gender nationwide. The Senate approved the measure 43-12 on April 11.

“I’m glad that the common sense, the recognition that women deserve and are entitled to the same protections as men, won the day,” said Rep. Steve Andersson, R-Geneva. “What we’re going to do is raise the level of all ships. Men, women, everyone does better because of this.”

Originally brought to the states for ratification in 1972, only 35 state legislatures voted for the amendment before a 1982 deadline set by Congress.

To ratify it in the Illinois House, at least 71 votes were needed, so both Democrat and Republican support was required. Democrats strongly backed the ERA, but Republicans were divided.

Andersson, who had been working with Republican colleagues to support the amendment, said he was nervous about the vote during the almost two-hour debate on the House floor.

“We were very close on numbers, and you can tell it’s a very emotional issue,” he said. “I didn’t know until the bell rang and we voted (if) it would be ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

Still, other Republican lawmakers rallied against the resolution, citing concerns it would codify into the law many policies against conservative values, such as abortion rights.

“The only alleged benefit I can see and that I’ve heard about or seen argued in court is that it will expand taxpayer funding of abortions,” said Rep. Peter Breen, R-Lombard. “They have no other thing they want to do, and they’ll say, ‘It’s silliness to talk about that.’”

He added that the 1982 deadline set by Congress passed decades ago and that Illinois’ ratification would be meaningless.

“For us to adopt this today would be to adopt a falsehood. It would mean to adopt an illegal act. It would be a violation of our very own oaths of office,” he said.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in this area, and we have a number of laws on the books already to protect women,” she said. “The fact of the matter is that women will not be protected until men decide to protect them and decide to stop the sexual harassment, decide to stop the domestic abuse, decide to stop the sex trafficking, decide in the work places when they are in charge that they will protect the women under their charge. We have the rules on the books.”

Supporters doubled down against the opponents’ claims during the heated debate.

The resolution’s House sponsor, Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, said most of the opponents’ concerns were moot because Illinois’ own ERA did not force unisex bathrooms, co-ed prisons or loss of sports scholarships, which he called “silliness.”

“All of those horror stories about to come forth have not happened under our state constitution,” he said. “Ladies and gentlemen, there have been no issues in the state of Illinois with our equal rights language in our constitution about the issue of abortion.”

Rep. Sue Scherer, D-Decatur, said she had heard debate about ERA since college.

“I listened to many Catholic pro-life friends and family,” Scherer said. “Several of them are very dignified attorneys, and every time I asked, I got the same answer. They said to quit using pro-life as an excuse to suppress women.”

Sen. Heather Steans, D-Chicago, who sponsored the resolution in the Senate, said federal anti-discrimination laws could be removed with the stroke of a pen by Congress, which is why she pushed for ERA’s ratification.

“By ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment, we can provide a strong legal protection for women’s rights and prevent rollbacks from Congress or presidential administrations,” Steans said. “This amendment is still relevant and necessary.”

In 2017, Nevada became the 36th state to ratify ERA. With Illinois’ action Wednesday, only one more state needs to ratify it. But Congress will have to remove the deadline for it to become the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Pushes to ratify the ERA were made in Virginia this year but ended up failing. Steans said she’d like to see Virginia’s legislature finish the ratification process.

“After nearly 50 years of opposition, we are just one state away from ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment to the constitution,” Steans said. “I encourage my colleagues in Virginia to continue the charge and become the final state to ratify the ERA.”

Maximilian Kwiatkowski is a reporter for The Springfield (Ill.) State Journal-Register.